A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines and contrasts two or more studies of a common phenomenon. Its emphasis is on the quantification of the heterogeneity in effects across studies, the identification of moderators of this heterogeneity, and the quantification of the association between such moderators and effects. Given this, and in line with the growing appreciation for and embracement of heterogeneity in psychological research as not a nuisance but rather a boon for advancing theory, gauging generalizability, identifying moderators and boundary conditions, and assisting in future study planning, we make the assessment of heterogeneity the focus of this chapter. Specifically, we illustrate the assessment of heterogeneity as well as the advantages offered by contemporary approaches to meta-analysis relative to the traditional approach for the assessment of heterogeneity via two case studies. Following our case studies, we review several important considerations relevant to meta-analysis and then conclude with a brief summation.

With over 1,700 articles on the topic in the past five years alone, consumer identity is established as a critical psychological driver of behavior in the marketplace. This chapter reviews all identity research in the top 20 marketing journals from 2017 to 2022 and integrates it into a single unifying framework: the Multiple-Identity Network. This integration answers several fundamental questions: What is consumer identity? What is the psychological structure of identity? How do consumers manage multiple identities within their self-concept (e.g., race, gender)? Key takeaways include the importance of brands and other marketplace actors in shaping stereotypes that define identities, psychological relationships between identities (e.g., dissimilarities), and balancing needs across multiple identities (e.g., status vs. belonging needs). Further topics include intersectionality, social hierarchy, stigma, marginalization, diversity marketing, target marketing, autonomy, self–brand connection, and online brand communities.

Online platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), CloudResearch, and Prolific have become a common source of data for behavioral researchers and consumer psychologists alike. This chapter reviews contemporary issues associated with online panel research, discussing first how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the extent to which researchers use online panels and the workers participating on certain online panels. The chapter explores how factors like a TikTok video can impact who uses these online panels and why. A longitudinal study of researcher perceptions and data quality practices finds that many practices do not align with current recommendations. The authors provide several recommendations for researchers to conduct high-quality behavioral research online, including the use of appropriate prescreens before data collection, data analysis preregistration practices, and avoiding post-screens after data collection that are not preregistered. Finally, the authors recommend researchers thoroughly report details on recruitment, restrictions, completion rates, and any differences in dropout rates across conditions.

This chapter examines the behaviour of various types of corporate actors, and their linkages, in the context of a fast-changing GVC. The restructuring of the TV industry around transnational production networks has created two types of companies (lead firms and suppliers), and two classes of suppliers (sector-specific and multisectoral). Using Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction, the first section reflects on the impact of the digital revolution on lead firms and sector-specific suppliers. The second section focuses on the relationships between the different sets of actors and examines the modes of governance that prevail in the TV GVC. The thrust of corporate strategies, it argues, is strongly influenced by businesses’ positions in the GVC, and the power asymmetries between lead firms and suppliers are leading them to divergent approaches to integration. The final section demonstrates how the rise of the global suppliers (the tech giants) in the TV industry is furthering the global integration of the sector, and facilitating industry co-evolution through the formation of a supply base that is shared across several industries.

This chapter reviews the myriad ways in which consumers use compensatory consumption strategies to address self-discrepancies. First, we review the existing literature on compensatory consumption. Specifically, we discuss the role of self-discrepancies in triggering compensatory consumption, review the compensatory consumption strategies consumers can use to cope with such self-discrepancies, and discuss their effectiveness. Next, we address consumer tensions and mispredictions regarding whether and when to pursue compensatory consumption. We conclude with a discussion of future opportunities for research on this topic.

This first chapter explains why and how the GVC framework can make a contribution to media and communication studies. International communication, the discipline’s subject area dealing with cross-border media scholarship, stands as at a crossroads because its concepts were fashioned when a clear line of demarcation between the local and the global prevailed. This line has blurred, rendering some aspects of the discipline obsolete. The chapter argues that the GVC framework can help lay the epistemological foundations of a forward-looking paradigm that is altogether holistic, multidisciplinary, and cosmopolitan. In the global era, the global cannot be an adjunct to a pre-existing theory but must be inherent to its epistemology. With the GVC framework, the global TV industry can be holistically analysed as a single systemic entity. The first part highlights existing theoretical issues within international communication, and the second explains how the GVC framework can contribute to solve them.

Consumption is inherently a social activity. Interpersonal influences derive from exposure to others’ communications and actions and can affect the motivations, thoughts, emotions, or behaviors of a given focal consumer. Such influences arise from direct interaction between two or more individuals or from indirect exposure to other individual(s), such as via social media, social norms, or thinking about others. This chapter highlights and integrates the large body of interpersonal influence research from approximately the last five years (published between 2014 and 2021) using an organizing framework built around the customer journey. We also offer thoughts on where we see opportunities for moving interpersonal influences research in new directions.

This chapter assesses how consumer research defines a “field experiment,” takes a look at trends in field experimentation in consumer research journals, explores the advantages and shortcomings of field experimentation, and assesses the status and value of open science practices for field experiments. These assessments render four insights. First, the field of consumer research does not have a consensus on the definition of field experiments, though an established taxonomy helps us determine the extent to which any given field experiment differs from traditional lab settings. Second, about 7 ercent of the published papers in one of the top consumer psychology journals include some form of field experiment – a small but growing proportion. Third, although field experimentation can be useful for providing evidence of external validity and estimating real-world effect sizes, no single lab or field study offers complete generalizable insight. Instead, each well-designed, high-powered study adds to the collection of findings that converge to advance our understanding. Finally, open science practices are useful for bridging scientific findings in field experiments with real-life applications.

Access represents an alternative mode of consumption to ownership that may be market mediated in which no transfer of ownership takes place. We review the last ten years of marketing research on this topic and discuss access as coexisting with ownership on a continuum. Access provides distinct benefits anchored in its temporariness and freedom from the financial, social, and emotional burdens of ownership. Our review highlights individual- as well as firm-level antecedents of access. We identify four key paradoxical consequences of access-based consumption: more consumption/less attachment; “mine”/not “mine”; prosocial/pro-status signaling; and empowerment/exploitation. We conclude with future research agenda.

Consumers are placing increasing importance on morality in the perceived costs and benefits of a marketplace transaction. This chapter considers the moral decisions consumers make, focusing on three key areas of marketplace morality: (1) how company morality or immorality influences consumer perceptions and decisions, (2) how consumers’ morality is expressed in their prosocial and sustainable decisions, and (3) how consumers’ immorality influences companies and other consumers. Finally, we identify areas for future research that we hope will lead to advancement of the literature on marketplace morality.

Research in consumer research has rightfully been criticized for p-hacking, hypothesizing after the results are known, and other practices that lead to overestimation of the reliability and replicability of published results. Remediation has centered on more closely approximating the ideal hypothetico-deductive (i.e., confirmatory) method. There has been a push toward forming, and registering, selective hypotheses before running experiments, testing only those hypotheses, and testing each hypothesis with a single, preplanned analysis. We argue that doing better confirmatory experiments is not the (whole) solution and that HARKing and running multiple analyses are not the problem per se. The problem is that we misrepresent exploratory research as confirmatory. Forcing exploratory research into a hypothetico-deductive straitjacket leads to bad hypothesis testing. The straitjacket also leads to bad exploration, crowding out essential, good exploration that deserves space in our journals. We propose a recipe for more honest consumer research, in which authors report exploratory studies meant to generate hypotheses followed by truly confirmatory studies that test those hypotheses.

Although religion is an important part of daily life for many consumers, only limited research has examined how it functions in consumer settings. This chapter proposes an organizing framework for understanding the intersection between religion and consumer behavior. We first define key constructs related to religion, before discussing common methodological paradigms for studying religion in consumer spaces. We then review prior research on religion and consumer behavior along two dimensions: (1) how consumption shapes the experience of religion, and (2) how religion shapes the consumption process. We close with a discussion of open questions related to religion and consumption, and directions for future research.